MEMORY HONOURED

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 266, 7 August 1934, Page 8

MEMORY HONOURED

Late Archdeacon Johnson Tribute to the late Ven. Archdeacon A. M. Johnson was paid in several of the Anglican churches in the Wellington district at memorial services on Sunday. Preaching at St. Paul’s Pro-Cathe-dral, Canon Percival James said that the late Archdeacon Johnson was vicar of St. Paul’s for 18 years, and he had the unique experience of serving three city parishes in Wellington. It would be agreed, said Canon James, that the best of Archdeacon Johnson’s good, work as a parochial clergyman was done In the personal relationships of his ministry. It was the privilege of the parish priest to enter the lives and homes of his people at the most tender and sacred times of their joys and sorrows. In his work the archdeacon excelled because of his ready sympathy and his warm kindness of heart. It was at St. Paul’s School, in London, that the foundations of his scholarship were laid. A great and accurate scholar, a keen and ardent and a ready writer, he might have been expected, had he remained in England, to be preferred to a position in the church in which he might have found leisure for study and scope for writing or teaching, but he chose the harder part of pioneer work in the young church of this colony. After two vears in his first curacy, he came to Wellington, and remained and laboured here for 38 years. The lesson was read by the GovernorGeneral, Lord Bledisloe. The music by the choir included Spohr’s “Blest Are the Departed” and the “Contakion of the Faithful Departed,” of the,Eastern Church.